


The Only Way Is Forward

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 07:09:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4616067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for a prompt on tumblr. He won't let this cycle become one of the bad ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Way Is Forward

This time around he meets her in a place where the sun meets the asphalt and makes it shine like dirty water covered in oil slicks, when he’s too young to really understand love (even though he already thinks he does) and she’s old enough to get it but it’s not her turn to remember so her eyes brush over him even though his eyes are fixated on her because he knows. And she’s been flitting in and out of his dreams and fragmented memories all his life, stronger than the déjà vu kind of feeling he gets when he crosses certain intersections or the bits and pieces of conversations and faces from other lives he recalls sometimes just sitting back against the chain link fence with Taiga. It’s there, everything that makes her who she is, the strength in the set of her shoulders and the precision in her fingertips and the way she walks and the tone of her voice and it’s the same things that make him fall for her every time despite himself (it’s the same thing that made him fall for her last time when it was her turn to remember and he’d already been married with three kids and he’d been drawn to her anyway and then he’d started remembering, tiny fragments crossing his mind when he lay in bed next to the wife he couldn’t just throw away to fend for herself and the whole thing had turned his world too far upside down for him to cling on to anything except for Alex).

And Tatsuya doesn’t believe in fate or soul mates or karma or anything of the sort, because he hasn’t deserved most of the chances he’s gotten and if they were meant to get together they’d have had a lifetime where both of them remember already or where they start off as next-door neighbors in a quiet little town where their parents have stable jobs or something not like this. Because that stuff is easy; that stuff is supposed to guide people to their lot in this particular cycle (or every cycle), but almost every time there are locked oak doors they can’t kick through, or they remember too late—but every time they end up falling for each other all over again, the way they are in the current cycle and all the ways they’d been before.

This time is no exception.

She is kind and patient and diligent and talented and many of the things Tatsuya would like to be himself, may of the things he tries to be and fails, whether it’s reciprocating what she gives him or trying to act as Taiga’s older brother or even being nice to other kids. It all feels so fake and bitter, like chocolate lightly sweetened with aspartame. And she is not selfish (she isn’t needlessly selfless either), but he is, and when he says as much it’s not just because of what happened to Taiga. It’s because he’s glad Taiga’s in the back seat asleep so that they can be as good as alone together, even if it’s ridiculous to expect her to see him as a man and not a child (but despite that he’s going to try). Because even though she’s single now, she’s not going to wait for him and he can’t expect her to, and even if he’s not going to give up this might be his best opportunity for a long time.

And when they lapse into silence he takes a good long look at her arms on the wheel, her head leaning forward and the way her hair is falling from its messy ponytail, the way her fingers are tapping to the low beat of the top 40 radio station too soft to hear above the bass. And there’s no way he can’t keep trying to catch up to her, trying to get her to see him as the man he was and will be, trying to get her to give him a shot.

The cycles where they somehow manage to get together and stay together are the happiest, the ones where he remembers all the past versions of her like leaves falling through the air of his mind after he’s already fallen for her, after they’re already together, when he lets her know and she hugs him so hard he can barely breathe and they spend an extra hour inside with just each other for company; the ones where he tries his damnedest to convince her that even though he’d showed up later because he’d been chasing her halfway across a continent and they’ve only known each other in this lifetime for a month she still loves him more than she loves her fiancé (and then a year after they elope when it’s clearly not just boredom or lust she remembers everything); the ones where they find each other late but still have enough left in them to give each other.

This cycle fits none of those models; there’s no way to predict whether they’ll make it work or not.

He still won’t let her kiss him, because like that it’s too much and like that it’s too clear that she sees him as a kid still; it’s too close to mocking even if she doesn’t really mean it that way. And he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to hold back if she does succeed, because it’s been too long and he’s become disgustingly frantic, holding onto any sign of hope to carry him through. But eventually she stops trying, and he wonders if that’s altogether a good thing or a bad thing when it comes to how she feels about him. Because aside from a few hair-ruffles here and there she doesn’t really treat him like a kid; she doesn’t talk down to him (although she never really did) or hold back (but she never really did that either) and she doesn’t dismiss him, even in that halfway-trusting way where she could see his point but also couldn’t let go of how young he was trying to make that point.

But then she wants him to meet her boyfriend and he wonders if that’s it, if this is a serious thing where she wants to introduce him to all of her friends, or if maybe she values Tatsuya’s opinion when it comes to this guy—and at that Tatsuya’s a little bit hopeful even in this crushing state of semi-defeat. And he’s not going to give up even if it’s serious, because bigger things have gotten in their way before.

The guy’s a gym rat Alex met at some club, and while he seems harmless, he also seems insubstantial (as much as can be gathered from one meeting, anyway). Tatsuya likes talking about fitness, but not in this super-serious kind of way, and not as basically the only topic of conversation (no matter how much Tatsuya tries to push the conversation away with Alex on board he’ll always turn it back) and he wonders if Alex really does like him—or what she sees in him (and his mind wanders to certain areas that he’d rather not think about when it comes to Alex and other people). But he pats Tatsuya on the arm and calls him “buddy” and maybe it’s petty and immature but it rubs Tatsuya the very wrong way.

Alex pulls him aside just before he leaves. “What do you think?”

Tatsuya shrugs. “He seems like…a decent guy.”

It’s damning with faint praise, and they both know it. Alex raises an eyebrow at him.

“Don’t like him?”

Tatsuya shrugs. “Do you?”

She lets him avoid the question and hugs him tightly; her arms are warm and strong and he has to try very hard to avoid sinking too deep into them and never letting her go.

She calls him over the next Saturday, and when he shows up at her apartment her door is unlocked and she’s sitting on the couch with an open carton of her favorite ice cream and the TV on the Spanish dub of some mindless ninja anime or other.

“What’s the occasion?” he asks, locking the door behind him.

She waits until he’s halfway to the couch before answering. “I dumped him.”

“Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around when you break out the whole quart?” says Tatsuya.

Alex glances at him through the very top of her glasses; her mouth is forming an ice cream-stained smile. “It’s a treat for myself for getting rid of a boring guy with no sense of humor. Do you want some or not?”

He sits down next to her and grabs the spoon; the ice cream’s already melting a little bit even in the air conditioning and the carton is sticky and he doesn’t even like rum raisin all that much but right now it tastes like home, like contentment. She flops back into the cushions, leans her head against his shoulder. Her hair is soft, split ends tickling the hollow of his wrist like untrimmed grass when he used to lie in the quad back in Akita and stare up at the sky the few months of the year when it wasn’t covered in snow. And even like this in sweatpants and a ratty tank top with ice cream on her mouth she’s so irresistibly gorgeous, like a chunk of meteorite he might find in a museum and could imagine finding in some desert, picking it up and turning it over in his hand. And if she tried to kiss him right now, there’s no way he’d be able to stop her.

She grabs at the carton of ice cream; he makes no move to stop her and it’s then she looks up into his face. And yes, this is absolutely the wrong time to say anything and yes it’s not fair to not give her time but goddamn if he’s going to wait his place in line behind all the other random people she may or may not have given the time of day to in past lives because life is not fucking fair and he doesn’t have any sort of karma to save up to make this exchange better.

So he kisses her.

He barely tastes the ice cream stuck to her lips before she moves away; her eyes are wide and her glasses have slipped far down her nose but even with her sight as terrible as it is she doesn’t push them back up.

“You didn’t mean that the way I would have kissed you,” says Alex.

“I meant it as a man,” says Tatsuya.

Alex sighs. She twists away for a brief second—and then back, resting her hand on Tatsuya’s knee (he can feel her pulse like a sledgehammer against his skin down the short distance to his bone).

“Now? Really?”

He shrugs. “I couldn’t let anyone else step in front of me. If not now, when? Someday?”

She lowers her head, accepting the reference to her favorite saying—and then she actually smiles, a wry pretzel-like twist on her lips.

“You really are grown up.”

And then, when he smiles back, there’s a slight change in her expression—something startling, almost wistful, like the physical embodiment of the feeling he gets crossing certain streets. If she doesn’t know now, she will awfully soon. And maybe this won’t work; the pessimist in Tatsuya says it won’t and she won’t remember enough soon enough, will be unable to reconcile the version of him in her memory to the child she clearly still thinks he is now (even only somewhat). Maybe she won’t be able to convince herself and he won’t be able to convince her and she’ll slip away from him once again until the next cycle.

But he’s changed things now, irrevocably so. There’s no way he’d be willing to pretend this never happened, even to save their friendship (even if that would ever work in the first place). They can’t go back, to a smoother and happier cycle, to the way things were just a few hours before now—the only way is forward.


End file.
